The Shattered Veil (SV1) (Act 1 + 2) (gemini) (KEEP) – The Shattered Veil (SV1) (Act 1 + 2) (gemini) (KEEP)

Adventure Summary

The Shattered Veil (Act 1)

People in western Ustalav have begun reporting strange deaths that aren't really deaths at all. Graves are turning up empty, not because someone raised the corpses, but because the dead simply wandered away. Stranger still, a handful of perfectly healthy people have vanished for hours at a time, claiming they walked roads lined with silent spirits before suddenly finding themselves back home.

Most dismiss the stories as local superstition until Sister Mirela Voss, a Pharasmin anchorite, begins connecting the reports. Every incident radiates outward from places where the line between our world and the Boneyard is dangerously thin. She asks the heroes to investigate before panic spreads.

What begins as a visit to a quiet village church plagued by ghostly echoes in Thornwick (Act 1) soon reveals a far darker truth: someone is deliberately planting Threshold Seeds to rot the boundary between planes, beginning with the crypts beneath the sanctuary and threatening to unravel the region's spiritual balance.

This adventure is designed for a party of 4-5 characters at level 3, using the Pathfinder 2e Remaster rules.

Adventure Background

The Shroud and the Veilbreaker (Spoilers)

Ask three people in the valley when things started going wrong, and you'll get three completely different answers. Local shepherds claim it started three weeks ago when voices began floating across the crags on windless nights. A few gravekeepers swear they woke up to find unsealed crypt doors and fresh boot prints leading out toward the woods. Most folks naturally tried to brush it off as bad dreams, old age, or grief playing tricks on people—but the Pharasmin clergy couldn't afford to be so naive.

Sister Mirela Voss spent three frantic weeks digging through parish logs, water-damaged journals, and frantic reports as the village rapidly unravelled. Patterns emerged fast. Every odd sighting or empty grave lined up with places where the local soil has always been thin—spots where the line between our world and the Boneyard was already frayed to begin with: the Thornwick church crypts, the ancient Ossuary of Forgotten Swords, and the true nexus waiting far below it: the Threshold of Souls.

Where the Veilbreaker and its cultist emissaries wander, the world bleeds. The entity plants Threshold Seeds—crystallized splinters of the Boneyard—to rot the boundary between worlds. When a hooded disciple of Brother Alms slipped into Thornwick three weeks back and planted the first seed beneath the sanctuary, the resulting tear leaked echoes outward, driving local spirits wild and pushing the town to the brink of collapse. Further west, in the upper levels of the ossuary, a second seed does something far worse: it consumes souls, corrupting Pharasma's psychopomps and turning the grief of local villagers into fuel for the breach.

Mirela has pushed her research and her vows as far as they can take her. She needs a party willing to step into the mess, cleanse or shatter the Threshold Seeds, and descend into the depths to shut down the main tear at the Threshold of Souls before the breach becomes permanent.

Running This Adventure

GM Notes & Adventure Guidelines

Running the Adventure

Don't run the NPCs or cultists as mustache-twirling villains. The tragedy here hits much harder when the party realizes almost nobody in Thornwick or the Flock of the Open Grave is purely evil. Whether it is Brother Alms grieving his lost family, Captain Vane protecting his band of deserters, or Selene suffering inside her corrupted form, these people are drowning in grief, guilt, or oaths they're too terrified to break. Play up those tragic moments whenever you can—the real horror stems from heartbreak, not just teeth and claws.

Recurring Themes Across Acts 1 & 2

Living or dead, almost every major figure in this module is desperately clinging to something they need to let go. The echoes in Thornwick, Brother Alms's cult, and the Soul-Hunger itself are all manifestations of unprocessed loss. Furthermore, the corruption behind these planar rifts didn't spring from pure malice; it started with sheer, unchecked curiosity and desperate research into overcoming death. Finally, isolation breeds despair—long before the veil tore open, the villagers had already stopped trusting one another, leaving them vulnerable to predators like the Harrow Wayfarers and radicalizers like the cult.

Campaign Overview & Treasure Progression

Act & Target Level	Synopsis & Key Objectives	Expected Treasure
Act 1: Echoes of Thornwick Target Level 3	The party arrives in Thornwick as a mysterious planar rift tears through the village, causing spectral echoes of the recently deceased to torment the living. The heroes investigate the epicenter at the church crypt, deal with local survivors, and destroy or purify the first Threshold Seed before Thornwick is consumed.	~120 gp Total: +1 Weapon Potency runes, Potency Crystals, rank 1–2 divine/occult scrolls, and basic healing potions.
Act 2: The Ossuary of Forgotten Swords Target Level 4	With the Thornwick rift addressed, Sister Mirela guides the party to the northern ridge, where a second Threshold Seed actively consumes souls inside an ancient crusader mass grave. The party must travel the wilderness approach (W1–W5), solve the Seven Thresholds of the Soul puzzle in the Hall of Blades (Area O2), dismantle Brother Alms's cult in the subterranean shrine (Area O3), and confront or redeem the corrupted psychopomp Selene (Area O4) to secure the second seed.	~180 gp Total: +1 Striking Weapons, Crying Angel Pendants, Cloak of the Crusader (+1 resilient), Ghost Touch / Ghost Oil consumables, and rank 2–3 scrolls.

Encounter Difficulty & Party Scaling

Encounters are balanced for a standard party of four PCs. Quick-adjustments for different table sizes:

Table Size	Adjustment Guidance
5 Players (+20–30 XP Budget)	Add one additional creature from the encounter's threat pool (e.g., a Harrow Cutthroat in W1 or a Bone Scavenger in O1).
3 Players (-20–30 XP Budget)	Remove one minion/hazard entirely rather than trimming Hit Points. For solo boss fights (like the Iron Automaton in W4 or the Soul-Hunger in O4), trim total HP by 25% and reduce save DCs by 1 or 2.

GM Primer: Handling Incorporeal Targets (PF2e Remaster)

Fighting incorporeal entities like Echoes can quickly turn deadly for a Level 3 party if players don't understand the mechanics or lack the right tools. Use this reference guide to keep combat smooth, fair, and tactically engaging without causing an accidental total party wipe.

1. Key Remaster Rules Refresher

Immune to Nonmagical Attacks: Incorporeal creatures take zero damage from mundane weapons, unarmed strikes, or physical hazards that lack magical properties.
Universal Resistance: Even against magical physical strikes (like a +1 weapon), incorporeal entities possess Resistance to all damage (typically 3 to 5 at low levels), except for specific damage types like Force or Spirit.
No Material Substance: They can pass through solid walls, objects, and living creatures. Passing through or ending a turn inside a solid object makes them Concealed or Hidden.
No Physical Maneuvers: Incorporeal creatures cannot be Tripped, Grappled, or Shoved by standard means, nor can they Flank PCs unless a specific trait allows it.

2. Damage Type Interactions

Attack / Damage Type	Effect Against Incorporeal Echoes
Mundane Weapon / Unarmed	Immune. Deals 0 damage.
+1 Magic Weapon	Bypasses immunity, but damage is reduced by the Echo's Resistance.
Spirit or Force Damage	Bypasses Resistance entirely. Deals full damage.
*Vitality Energy (e.g., Heal)*	Deals full damage if targeting undead echoes; ignores physical resistance.
Ghost Touch Rune / Dust-Coated Weapon	Completely negates Incorporeal resistance for weapon strikes.

3. Tactical GM Advice: Setting Up Party Success

Telegraph the Mechanics Early: Before throwing the party into initiative against echoes, describe environmental cues—a spectral blade passing harmlessly through a wooden table, or Varla explicitly warning the PCs that mundane steel will slice right through thin air.

Leverage Act 1 Assets:

Graveward Dust (Grave-Salt): The party can utilize this resource in two tactical ways:
- Weapon Coating (1 Action): Coat a weapon or up to 10 pieces of ammunition. For 1 minute, strikes with the weapon gain the benefits of a ghost touch rune, bypassing incorporeal resistance entirely and allowing mundane weapons to affect echoes.
- Area Barrier (2 Actions): Sprinkle across a doorway, window, or 5-foot square. The first incorporeal entity attempting to cross it halts its movement immediately and takes 2d6 Spirit damage (DC 18 basic Will save).
Thornwick the Wolf: Thornwick's Echolocation Sense provides a +2 circumstance bonus to Initiative against echoes, stopping the party from being caught flat-footed by phasing attackers. His warning howl also gives 1 round of prep time to draw scrolls or apply weapon coatings.

Thornwick

Fewer than two hundred people are still clinging to a life in Thornwick. Nestled in a cold, lonely valley right at the foot of the Hungry Mountains, it used to be a decent enough stopover for pilgrims heading south toward the old Pharasmin shrines, while local shepherds raised goats along the rocky crags above. Those quiet days are long gone now.

The land itself has begun to reject life. Ever since the first Threshold Seed took root in the church crypts, cold planar static from the Boneyard has been seeping upward into the earth. The corrupted soil leaves crops sparse and stunted, half the spring lambs don't make it through their first week, and lingering ghost-echoes drift out from the church floorboards to drive the livestock wild.

Families pack up and slip away in the middle of the night whenever they scrape together enough coin. The folks who stay behind keep their doors bolted and talk in low whispers after sundown—especially once the church bells start ringing on their own. Nobody has touched those ropes in months, but down below, the tear continues to leak its gray haze into the roots of the village.